Azure vs. AWS

When it comes to choosing between AWS and Azure – the two titans of the public cloud industry – the only certainty is that the choice will have a lasting impact on your enterprise. And with the vendors frequently changing sales models, prices and feature sets, it’s hard to even come up with a side-by-side, apples to apples comparison that isn’t almost instantly dated.

So what’s a smart IT pro to do?

Understand which is the right cloud for the right workload. Many companies today are taking a hybrid approach to their public clouds – putting some workloads on AWS, some on Azure and some in a private cloud (or even other public cloud providers like Google).

Understand the financial implications of each platform. Without question, pricing in the public cloud can quickly get away from even the most seasoned pro. The key difference between AWS and Azure in this regard is that AWS charges customers by rounding up the number of hours used whereas Azure rounds up by the minute. As far as models, AWS offers on-demand, reserved and spot, while Azure only offers on-demand pricing with short-term commitments (either pre-paid or monthly).

Understand the burden on your team – and how they’ll get help. While Azure bills itself as a cloud that is easier and faster to get going with than AWS, both definitely require a high level of skill (and plenty of low-level monitoring and notification work) from your IT team. Even if you’ve got the best group in the business, it’s still critical to understand how they’ll get help when and if they need it.